About Alex: Prior to Anderson, Alex Caron (‘23) lived in Montreal and worked in management consulting at Accenture. Alex is currently a first-year student at Anderson and in his free time, he likes discovering California, playing tennis, watching sports, and reading up on technology. 

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March 24th, 2021 – That’s when I received the phone call from UCLA Anderson Admission telling me the amazing news that I had been accepted at UCLA Anderson in the Full-time MBA program. My wife, who was also applying to business school with me, received the same good news just a few hours after. This was a turning point in my life, but I could not have anticipated the amount of work necessary to move my entire life from Canada to Los Angeles. In the months that followed, there was a lot of stuff to do in order to get ready for the move. Below I have divided my experiences in two parts: before moving to LA and after arriving in LA. I’ve tried to extract some lessons that my wife and I learned in both. 

Preparing to move to LA – Nowadays, a lot of the preparation for moving and living in a new city can be done before you actually arrive in that new city. Without a doubt, the most important part for an international student is the Visa application, which UCLA helps you obtain. Another key decision that we took was deciding to rent an apartment before arriving in LA. We were debating between renting a temporary place and visiting apartments in person for the first few weeks or simply doing virtual visits from Canada and signing the lease remotely. We decided to go for the latter as the virtual visits gave us a good view and understanding of the apartments. COVID further accelerated the willingness of real-estate agents to do virtual visits. My first takeaway from that experience was the importance of visiting the neighborhood virtually as well and understanding the surroundings as this can drastically impact your experience. While we also considered if we should ship our furniture to LA, we ultimately decided that the international shipping costs were too high and not worth it. The rest of the preparation was straightforward but I recommend waiting to get to LA to set up your finances and phone plan as it is much easier with a US address. 

Arriving in LA – My second lesson is to arrive in LA at least a few weeks before classes start. We arrived about 3 weeks before and took the first week and a half to set up our bank account, credit cards, phone plans and furniture for our entire apartment. Navigating the US with no credit, as you are an international student, is difficult. This means registering for a prepaid phone plan, buying your car in cash with no potential for financing, and trying (somehow) to get a credit card that does not require SSN. An additional trick for international students to get a credit card in the US is to use the Nova Credit website that allows you to use your credit file from your home country to apply for an AMEX credit card. Giving yourself time before the start of class also allows you to enjoy the onboarding week at Anderson. That first week is very busy and filled with activities that are much more enjoyable if you don’t have to build furniture when you come back home at night. 

Overall, my main takeaways from this experience are the following: 

• Enjoy and celebrate this amazing feeling of being accepted
• Make a list of things you have to do before leaving your home country and a list of things to do when you arrive in LA
• Try to have your housing figured out before arriving in LA (ideally)
• Make sure you enjoy the experience of moving to and discovering a new city 

Pictures

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Student Blogger: Alex Caron ‘23

Undergrad: University of Toronto, ‘17

Pre-MBA: Management Consulting, Accenture

Leadership@Anderson: Section Director of Community Impact, Director of Operations for Admissions Ambassador Corps, Director of Admissions for Family Business Association, Board Fellow for the Children’s Bureau of Southern California

Instagram: @alezcaron